A life in random roles

Slowly but surely, with one wonderful piece after another, the Random Roles interviews that Will Harris does for The A.V. Club have turned into one of my favorite things on the Internet. The premise is simple: Harris sits down with an actor, usually one best known for character parts, to discuss an assortment of the movies and television shows in which he or she has appeared—except that the subjects don’t know in advance what roles he’s going to bring up. It results in a kind of Inside the Actors Studio for actors who might have trouble filling an auditorium, even as their faces and voices constitute an essential piece of our lives as viewers and moviegoers. I’m talking about the likes of Stephen Tobolowsky, Kurtwood Smith, and Ted Levine, actors whose names we often don’t know, even as their presence sends a charge through the screen whenever they appear. We’d recognize them on the street, but if we did, we might think they sold us a car or that we knew them in college, when in fact they’ve been insinuating themselves into our consciousness in tiny increments, a line or two at a time.

Occasionally, you’ll see a bigger name pop up—Harris has spoken with Morgan Freeman, Don Johnson, and Timothy Dalton, all in the last few months—but the most engaging interviews tend to be with actors who have thrived for decades in small parts, or who spent years in the wilderness before or after their shot at the big time. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of the working artist who puts as much life as possible into a few seconds of screen time on the way to the next paycheck, and not surprisingly, these interviews are all repositories of craft, knowledge, and great stories. In today’s installment, for instance, Harris talks to Kurt Fuller, who is practically the embodiment of “Hey, it’s that guy!” Here he is talking about his first onscreen appearance, as an unnamed cameraman on Knight Rider:

And my line was, “The car talks. The car talks!” And I said it just about that badly. I remember the director said to me—and this has been said to me by that director, but also by Ivan Reitman during Ghostbusters 2, which was very early on as well, when I was petrified—”Do less than you ever thought it was possible to do.” And that’s been very good advice. The more I take it, the better I feel. I can overact in two seconds.

If these pieces are invariably more interesting and insightful than what usually comes out of the press junkets we get from more recognizable stars, that’s largely thanks to Harris, who seems to prepare for each interview by watching everything the subject has ever done, but it’s also due to the peculiar position of the character actor. To endure for forty years in Hollywood on one scene at a time requires enormous professionalism, versatility, and talent, and your indispensability relies on the fact that you can be taken for granted. There’s no opportunity to sulk in your trailer or fight with your director: you’re there solely to make each scene, and your fellow performers, just a little bit better. This requires considerable depth of experience, as well as an underlying pragmatism and lack of ego that comes less from natural modesty than a recognition of how best to get things done. (For an unforgettable illustration of the contrast between the life of a character actor and that of a star, check out Tobolowsky’s story of working with Steven Seagal in The Glimmer Man.)

Occasionally, you’ll see a performer with a character actor’s soul launched unexpectedly into the ranks of leading men, and it’s always worth paying attention to the result, which serves almost as a referendum on how much trickery we’re willing to tolerate. (What David Thomson says of Kevin Spacey applies strongly here: “He can be our best actor, but only if we accept that acting is a bag of tricks that leaves scant room for being a real and considerate human being.”) It’s possible that movies and television shows work best in the way Renaissance painting did, with a singular, inexplicable presence at the center—the mystery of stardom—surrounded by figures at the edges, rendered with unobtrusive craft, that serve to bring out the main subject. These anonymous putti and cherubim don’t often have a chance to tell their stories, and they’ve long since learned to be content with being passed over at a glance, but when they do talk, we’re reminded of how crucial they can be. As Jeffrey Tambor says to Harris: “The great thing about acting is that you kind of do what’s there and do it the best you can.” And when you’re done, you cash your check, call your agent, and move on to your next small moment of vividness.